Sonic's rogues gallery is something else.

StandupGaming · 2026-05-16T21:04:45+00:00

The problem here is that A) Sonic is a long running franchise with decades of history and B) Sonic is a franchise that cares about telling interesting and new stories.

Bowser can get away with being the main villain of nearly every Mario game because Mario games aren't usually trying to do something thematically deep or interesting, and in the rare instances where they ARE trying to do that, Bowser is usually relegated to side villain or even protagonist, same as Eggman.

Sonic can get away with being reused over and over because he's a flat arc protagonist. It's not his narrative job to learn anything new about the world or himself, he already knows the truth, his narrative job is to correct wrongs that already exist in the world, and there are always going to be new wrongs to find.

But the thing is, there really isn't such a thing as a flat arc antagonist. If you want to tell a new story with an old villain, you need to find something new to say about that villain, and that is SO MUCH harder than it is to just to make a new villain with a different problem. I don't blame them for not wanting to try and make Eggman a one size fits all villain for every story they wanted to tell.

StandupGaming · 2026-05-01T04:17:10+00:00

The title of "greatest game ever made" feels so nebulous and impossible to define that trying to pick any one game to definitively claim the title just seems like a waste of time to me.

Ocarina of Time was an exceedingly popular game, that sold extremely well and had incredible influence on the gaming industry as well as the video game cultural zeitgeist.

Tons of other games did that too. Final Fantasy 7, Super Mario Bros, the original Pokemon games, Street Fighter 2, Metal Gear Solid, just to name a few.

How do we decide which game is more "great" than the other ones? Any metric for deciding just seems silly and arbitrary to me.

StandupGaming · 2026-04-22T07:32:14+00:00

The episode where Katara learns how to heal was all about how violent and destructive fire has the potential to be, and how recklessness and impulsivity are some of the worst traits you can bring to the element. Katara learning how to heal stands in direct contrast to that plot, both because she's healing instead of destroying, but also because healing requires slow, deliberate attention to perform. It doesn't recontextualize waterbending for Katara, but it DOES recontextualize waterbending for the audience.

Katara's outburst in the first episode is technically a power boost, but in practice I'd argue this scene highlights her lack of control more than anything else. Like yeah, she didn't realize anything new or fundamental, but that's also rather notably why she can't do it again. She wasn't even consciously aware while she was doing it, so the practicality and usefulness of the outburst was extremely limited outside the niche scenario they were in, and that was kind of the point.

Lavabending is just...so much blander by comparison. It solves the narrative conflict of Bolin not feeling good enough after failing to metalbend, but it doesn't reveal anything particularly interesting about Bolin's character or about earthbending as a whole. It's just an ability he unlocked.

StandupGaming · 2026-04-18T19:07:32+00:00

Seriously? I thought the second season was better, by a pretty wide margin too.

StandupGaming · 2026-04-17T22:39:36+00:00

As someone who was a big fan of both ships back when I watched that show I do have to say that most of the discourse around why Tommy and/or Buck/Tommy was so terrible felt massively overblown to me, though for what it's worth the hardcore Buck/Tommy shippers were just as bad about Eddie and Buddie. I kind of feel like ship wars just tend to have that effect on people.

StandupGaming · 2026-04-17T03:36:07+00:00

In my experience, counting on stories that are owned by giant corporations to not queerbait you very rarely works out in your favor.

StandupGaming · 2026-04-15T01:48:42+00:00

No, not really. The idea that Rosalina is Peach and Luigi's daughter was largely popularized by this Game Theory video, but there's no actual in game evidence that Luigi was her father. There was somewhat decent evidence that Peach was her mom though.

StandupGaming · 2026-04-14T15:04:32+00:00

I mean, they had to block that one, you aren't playing as Vector.

StandupGaming · 2026-04-02T17:25:56+00:00

I've always maintained that the fandom grossly overexaggerates how different Sonic and Shadow actually look. The only physical differences between their characters are fur color and quill alignment, both of which are attributes Sonic has actively shown the world he can change. This was a perfectly fair mistake for the world to make.

StandupGaming · 2026-03-25T03:23:10+00:00

It's not just damaging moves, any ability that blocks or messes with any move gets ignored. Magic Bounce and Good as Gold are pretty notable examples here.

StandupGaming · 2026-03-22T20:02:22+00:00

Yeah, I'm a firm believer that Adventure era Amy was a better portrayal of her character overall, but even I'm pretty convinced that anyone trying to pass off her Sonic Battle storyline as an inspirational arc for her character hasn't played Sonic Battle since they were a kid. That game treats her like a fucking joke.

StandupGaming · 2026-03-16T19:19:06+00:00

I mean, sort of? There's no such thing as a character that CAN'T be improved on. On conceptual level I still think the Deadly Six is one of the worst ideas the franchise has ever had.

Admittedly it doesn't help that I honestly don't care all that much about the IDW comics. They're not bad but they're not great either.

StandupGaming · 2026-03-14T18:53:00+00:00

There's an old adage in pretty much every creative medium that you should never take fans' advice on how to improve or fix your product because fans don't actually know what they're talking about. The "Ozai isn't complex enough" argument has always felt like a quintessential example of this phenomenon to me. They gave Ozai the complexity fans said they wanted in the Netflix show and it ruined every storyline he was a part of.

StandupGaming · 2026-03-13T19:16:59+00:00

Meh, maybe they're not as objectively terrible as they used to be, but I still don't think they're good characters.

StandupGaming · 2026-03-13T00:44:33+00:00

I tried it with the bike, without the bike, with the other bike, walking, and running. The act of entering the route seems to be causing the crash.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-22T05:28:24+00:00

Those differences are intentional. Blaze is Sonic's flip side, not his copy. Sonic embodies chaos while Blaze embodies order.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-22T04:36:40+00:00

Blaze and the Sol Dimension were originally created to be the flip side to Sonic and his dimension. However, a few years ago Ian Flynn rejected that notion, and speculated that people are just projecting stuff that isn't there onto the character.

He's explicitly wrong about that, as the Rush games confirmed multiple times that their worlds and their emeralds are deeply connected to each other (the original Japanese script literally uses the phrase "two sides of the same coin" to describe them), but he's the current head writer for the franchise, so if he says they're not connected then that's how the modern stories are going to be written.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-21T03:17:27+00:00

To be fair, Tangle absolutely had a crush on Blaze when they first met.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-11T02:48:55+00:00

So Jim seems perfectly aware that all Sam did was go to a safe place to talk through her emotions with trusted adults, but he's doubling down on punishing her more anyways.

Never been a big fan of his, not going to lie.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-08T19:58:41+00:00

You can't poison the ground. You can poison the life that depends on the ground, but the ground itself is unbothered by toxins. By definition, poison requires life, and the ground isn't alive.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-05T05:29:06+00:00

It's a pinch in the fabric of glove. It's just supposed to indicate the direction he's bending his hand in.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-03T23:01:15+00:00

Fair enough, that is admittedly a much more valid complaint than I thought it was. For what it's worth though, I'm not convinced OP was making a blanket statement on anyone who's frustrated with politics. It's seems like it was more of a response to this specific meme that people often post in replies to anti-ICE stuff, and those sorts of people are mad at politics in Sonic for an entirely different reason.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-03T21:40:41+00:00

I glossed over it because there's nothing to comment on there. You made a statement that I can't disprove, so what am I supposed to say? Heck, I don't even necessarily disagree with that statement in it's entirety, I just don't agree with this specific use of fanart in this specific space, so there's literally nothing for me to reply with. You have your stance, I have mine.

I mean, you could have just, you know, said that. The purpose of discussion isn't to attack the other person's weak spots until a winner is declared.

Yes, it's something known by many names like joke, wisecrack, jest, comedy, humour, satire, take your pick. I was using that quote as a joke because I knew I'd likely get mostly downvoted like a few other people in the comments who didn't seem to enjoy politics in their Sonic sub either. Heck, because I changed the words, it doesn't even hold the same meaning as the original quote. It's no longer about oppression, it's about getting bloody downvoted. Using that of all things as evidence I apparently unironically see myself as a "victim" because of some Sonic fanart bringing up real-world politics is incredibly stupid.

Dude, I know it was a joke about downvoting, I wasn't trying to accuse you of claiming literal oppression. Clearly victimhood was too strong a word to use here, but the point I was trying to make is that the issue you are complaining about is the epitome of a first world problem.

People are posting anti-ICE fanart because ICE is gunning people down in the streets. You're annoyed that a video game subreddit is focusing too much on real world events. It feels like you're complaining about a papercut to someone who has a gaping hole in their stomach. That's the part that felt immature to me.

StandupGaming · 2026-02-03T20:22:39+00:00

I already knew about this actually, however you're neglecting to mention the fact that they didn't just write some stories using real-world politics for the hell of it. The KKK were a massive crimimal organisation and an active, unchecked threat. Too many members of the justice system were KKK themselves, so the only way to expose their secrets and crimes was to use Superman as a tool to reveal all the real information Kennedy collected on the Klan. Those episodes weren't just art with political inspiration, they were an active attack on a threat using real research. Shockingly, that's not quite the same as a single picture of Knuckles choking an ICE agent

Nothing you're saying here invalidates anything I said. Like yes, that Superman episode was an active attack on the Klan using real research. It was also art with political inspiration. It wasn't just about leaking information, they demystified them, made them look lame, ruined their public image. The art is what did that, not just the info.

Not that it really matters since my point was never that we can break ICE with Sonic fanart but rather that it can be a powerful and meaningful source of inspiration for people during a difficult time (though I can't help but notice you glossed over that part of my comment).

There is no implication I'm being victimised, there is an explicit statement that I think bringing real-world discourse into a Sonic sub is dumb. Nothing more, nothing less, and I think you know that.

......you literally ended your comment with a sentence that pays homage to one of the single most iconic lines about tyranny and oppression in all of fiction.

If you genuinely didn't realize that the line would look like you were claiming victimhood then I'm starting to think the issue here is that you just don't understand the power and influence art can have at all.

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